You could more than double your conversion rate of abandoned carts by following these email best practices.
A recent study by Barilliance of 200 ecommerce websites has discovered some rather interesting trends in the world of cart abandonment best practices. It shows that sending cart abandonment emails very soon after the cart is abandoned is actually more effective than sending it a day later.
It also revealed a big gap between the industry average of an 18% conversion rate for cart abandonment emails, and the best in the industry who achieve 40% conversion. If you could close that gap and join the ranks of the best in the industry you could be converting over double the amount of people who abandon their carts! Just think of the ROI possibilities of investing sufficiently to achieve that conversion rate.
For more insights on cart abandonment emails see the full infographic below:
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The new Facebook marketplace will give online classifieds a social twist.
Importance: [rating=3] (For eCommerce businesses)
Recommended Source: Facebook Newsroom
E-marketplaces like eBay, Craigslist, Gumtree and Amazon marketplace are often big drivers of revenue for e-commerce businesses. Many find that although they also sell on their own site, big chunks of sales come from those external platforms which haves successfully amassed huge user bases.
As a social network, Facebook's decision to launch its own e-marketplace seems slightly strange at first glance. But there is a strong justification for the move. With over 1 billion active monthly users and 450 million users already using Facebook groups to buy and sell goods, Facebook already has the kind of large user base required to establish a successful platform for buying and selling.
The marketplace Facebook have designed is built in much the same way as the rest of the social…
Taking action with the collection and analysis of survey data to help improve the customer journey and strengthen company processes.
Data collected from online surveys can do so much more than tell you what your customers are thinking. Research is a vital addition to any B2B and B2C marketing toolkit. Successful companies are developing their business strategy - with the aid of data - to make marketing decisions that identify and resolve customer issues.
The team at SmartSurvey (the UK’s leading online survey provider) have put together a guide to demonstrate effective use of online questionnaires and how to utilise surveys to shape your marketing strategy.
Sections covered in this guide include:
The Benefits of Collecting Customer Data
How to Collect Reliable, Honest Feedback
Designing Effective Online Surveys
The Market Research Society (MRS) recently published an article demonstrating that the UK research market has increased by 62% to £4.8 billion. A recent comprehensive…
How JD Sports outdoors brands Blacks and Millets integrated personalisation into their experience
With average online conversion rates still languishing below 5 percent for retailers, the use of personalised merchandising techniques to boost conversion is a popular investment for many retail sites. This case study of two outdoor retailers who are now owned by JD Sports shows the type of benefits that are possible with different forms of personalised recommendations and how they can be used on different page types:
“Compared to average site conversion rate, conversion rates were increased by 332% on Millets.co.uk and 277% Blacks.co.uk where a visitor selected a personalised product recommendation. The proportion of site revenue from product recommendations is significant, accounting for nearly one fifth of all sales (19.0% at Millets 16.9% at Blacks)”.
These examples and results relate to improvements during 2014.
Before this project, the sites were already using default recommendations from the commerce management platform on…
Let your content do the talking
Affiliate marketing has been seen for a long time as one of the most effective ways of generating income on the Internet. Basically it is a way for a website to generate income by attracting people to visit other businesses and purchase their goods and services. If someone does purchase something through an active affiliate link, then the owner of the link receives a percentage of the profit.
For example, if you have a website about building and fixing cars, you may include an affiliate link for a company selling car parts or something else related to cars. When the visitor on the website clicks on the affiliate link, they will be taken to the website that is selling the car parts, and if they make a purchase, the car part company will recognize…
Nosto European Fashion Report shows UK fashion buyers still prefer to buy on desktop
With London Fashion Week having just revealed what is hot and what is not on the catwalk it seems that UK fashion shoppers, while having their fingers on the pulse of the latest clothing trends, are less in tune with the newest technology than previously thought.
In our recent report, European Online Fashion in 2016, we analyzed data from over 700 online fashion merchants, constituting over 241 million consumer visits. The results show that UK online fashion shoppers prefer to make their purchases on desktop, rather than mobile - with 19% of online revenue in the UK fashion sector coming from mobile, compared to 58% for desktop.
Previous research has shown that for UK ecommerce generally smartphones account for 51% of purchases made, which means fashion buyers are behind the general curve when it comes to the uptake…
Introducing Expanded Text Ads.
Previously, the standard AdWords text ads that appear at the top and bottom of Google search results had a headline of up to 25 characters, and then two description lines of up to 35 characters each. They looked like this:
or, if you put a full stop at the end of your first description line, Google would move that description line up to be next to the headline, and your ad would look like this:
With the introduction of Expanded Text Ads, advertisers can now have two headlines of up to 30 characters each, plus a single description line of up to 80 characters. So the total space you’ve got available to put your message across has leapt from 95 characters to 140 characters. That’s nearly a 50% increase!
The display URL that appears in the ads has changed too – instead of being…
Jakob Bignert examines the spectre of automated merchandising and tries to reassure us that there is nothing to worry about – no seriously, you’ll be fine!
Since the industrial revolution, automation in the workplace has been met with extreme reactions. As a business owner you would rub your hands in glee as you realised you could punch out more widgets, more quickly while employing fewer people.
However, if fate had dealt you a different hand, you’d be quaking in your boots as you realised your widget making skills were no longer required and unemployment beckoned.
Retail automation
Retail, though, has seen remarkably few significant step changes when it comes to automation. And understandably; buy products, display them attractively, take the money, count it, bank it and repeat. OK, an oversimplification I grant you, but you get the point.
There are some though:
Cash registers and subsequent EPOS systems have removed the need for a counting…
In-app purchasing functionality and new 'web view' feature transforms Messenger into a powerful tool for making mobile sales.
Importance: [rating=5] (For ecommerce businesses)
Recommended source: Facebook Developers Blog
Yesterday Facebook introduced changes to its Facebook Messenger app, the most important of which for marketers is the introduction of a 'buy' button which will let users buy products via bots that exist within Messenger. There will be no need for the customer to leave the Messenger APP, the bot will be able the handle the whole transaction without having to re-direct to external pages.
To see how it'll work, just take a quick look at the short clip below:
Users can give Messenger their card details so it can handle payments for them (something many have already done for sending money to friends via the app), this reduces friction and saves having to fill in fiddly forms on mobile devices. Businesses will then…
Overcoming natural shyness on social media to encourage action
Today, inbound marketing is seen as THE approach to generate sales, particularly in B2B marketing. Directory listings, newspaper and magazine advertising, cold calling, all the 'in your face' marketing methods are dying a death - apparently. Content-based, relationship marketing is what we should all be doing now.
I agree with the benefits of the inbound marketing approach, but we should ask what happens if we move too far the other way? I have a real concern that salesmanship (or salespersonship if you prefer), in the B2B sector is a dying art and social media is becoming a crutch, for those less confident in their ability to sell. I want to make a stand right here and now and suggest that we mustn't lose this important skill and that social media can be used to support it.
Many articles advising on social media will suggest that social…
